 Welcome to news clips show mapping fault lines. And this week we're going to be talking about an incident that took place last Sunday that's May 23rd, where a Ryanair flight was made to land in Belarus. After the Belarusian authorities said that there was a bomb threat, later it turned out that Roman Protosevich, journalist, a dissident who has been launching, doing a major campaign against the Belarusian government was on board and he was detained. Now this has led to a major international diplomatic spat. You've seen very familiar denunciations from the West, especially the European Union. On the other hand, the Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko has said that this was a proportional action made as per the law and as per various conventions. So we have Pravir Purkayas start to talk about this. Pravir, so of course the Western media has clearly framed this as one of these intrepid human rights defenders being targeted by a dictatorial regime, which is how they usually frame many of these stories. But later reports have actually shown that the picture is far more complicated that there are many more elements to this than was earlier thought in. So could you maybe first let's quickly go through the incident and see what are the holes, so to speak, in this narrative that is being presented on almost the uniform way by the big media in the West? Well, you know the two parts to this question that you were asking, what is the response of the global media and how hypocritical or otherwise it is. Other is the issue of who was this person which the Belarusian government obviously wanted to take a charge of arrest and file cases against him. So if we look at the Western media's response and I think that would be the starting point and also the response of the Western governments talking about the Chicago Convention, et cetera. It's important that they do not recognize the fact that Western governments have repeatedly done this going back as far back as 1956 when Ben Bela who became later on the president of Algeria was also arrested in a similar fashion with another four of his colleagues. The plane was brought to Algiers and he was put in prison for, I think about next four or five years. So this is starting from that. There's a whole history of this. The most recent being of course, that of Ivo Morales, the president of Bolivia when his flight was forced to land because the overflight conditions were withdrawn midair and his flight was forced to land in Austria. And that was because there was a rumor or there was intelligence information which proved to be wrong. That Edward Snowden wasn't born and therefore that he might go to Ecuador and Bolivia seek asylum there. Therefore, Ivo Morales, the president of Bolivia's plane was brought down. So this was a blatant violation of not only the Chicago Convention, but also the sheer fact that here was the president of the country was put into a dangerous situation because they refused midair overflight permissions which they had given. So if you withdraw overflight permissions midair, obviously you are creating a dangerous situation for the flight itself. So none of this ever came to the Chicago Convention. This issue never came in front of the International Civil Aviation Organization which is the one which the UN agency which looks after what is commonly known as the Chicago Convention. So this is the first time this complaint has come but even before the complaint has come, sanctions have been imposed. So is it within the legal powers of the government to do so or not, has not yet been tested in any international platform? The European Union has already decided to impose sanctions. We'll come back to this later. The other issue is who is the protagonist? Then one of course is the government of Belarus. Other is Zoban Pratyshevich and his antecedents are not in public domain as much as they should be. So some of the papers have started reporting it because very difficult to keep everything really under the, are behind the curtain. After all leaks are taking place, his true picture is emerging. He is a fascist. He is a self-confessed one. His pictures are there all over with fascist emblems for being a part of the as of a battalion. Initially it was said he was a press officer, press person with the battalion, which is as a battalion as everybody knows is a part of a fascist outfit, which is in Ukraine. And he is now known to have fought in the battalion, participated in fights in Donbass. So it is not something which is being alleged. It is something which is already on record. His next metamorphosis is to become the US agencies, various US agencies, public spokesperson for you, for Belarus. And he finally first headed or was a part of the Radio Free Europe, which you know is an American funded, controlled outfit. Its history is very well known. So I'm not going to go into that. And later on into next, which again became an outlet for anti-Belarus governments campaigns, again funded by the National Endowment of Democracy and supported by the US. So first he was a fascist, participated as such in Ukraine and later on got co-opted by the United States. They're quite happy to co-opt such people into their campaigns. And this is what this person Roman Protasevich is. Now whether this is a journalistic, he's got a journalistic right to say whatever he wants is another matter, but that he's a self-confessed fascist being nurtured by the United States, various agencies is something which should cause concern. And the fact that the European Union has now basically made him as a defender of press freedom is also equally surprising. Because fascists are not particularly known to speak for press freedoms, particularly when they're in power. And even when they're not, they're quite well known for attacking press, the freedom of the press therefore doesn't exist in their eyes. So the fact that he's now become the major savior of Belarus and its press freedom is rather ironical. Absolutely Praveen. In this context, you'd mentioned the sanctions that the European Union has imposed maybe more restrictions coming in the days to come as well. So how do we see this sort of policy overreach at this point of time when in the context of what you mentioned that his record is problematic and there is also the very hypocrisy by the Europeans especially considering their records on this. You know, if you look at international law this should have gone to ICAO for discussions. If there was something else to be discussed it could have gone to the United Nations Security Council. The fact that it did not seems to indicate that the legal position of the party's concern, the European Union in this case and Belarus are not as strong as the media claims that as a country over which this flight was taking place even if overflight permissions had been given Belarus had certain powers. Now, whether this powers were enough for them to force the Ryan aircraft or not that's a question which could have been dealt legally in other platforms existing within the United Nations system. The fact that the European Union did not go into any of these platforms, imposed sanctions indicate certain things. One is it believes that it is above international law that whatever it says is international law and therefore they have the right to impose sanctions. Now sanctions, particularly financial sanctions we don't know what are the kind of sanctions that are going to come in the future. But if we look at sanctions, the sanction regime without United Nations Security Council resolution is actually a violation of international law. This has been pointed out time and again that the only binding sanctions that you can use are as a United Nations Security Council sanctions. Any other sanctions, including financial sanctions could be construed as an act of war. Particularly financial sanctions are akin to acts of war. So this particular method that the Western so-called democracies are adopting repeatedly that they have an international right to sanction whoever they want by sitting down discussing it, not bringing it to United Nations shows a rather dangerous drift in international situations. And I think this is a long-term cause of concern because it's basically saying United Nations is no longer the platform for us. What we sit and discuss, what we will decide as a so-called democracies leading the international world order, the new world international world order, which where we will decide what are the rules. Now they have never defined what the rules are. The rules are whatever we like to do are the rules. And we not defining the rules means that we can therefore create the playbook as we go along. And this has become now the modus operandi for all these sanctions and all these issues, whether it is sanctioned in Russia, whether it is sanctioned in China, whether it is sanctions in Venezuela, it doesn't really matter. The unilaterally the so-called Western democracies, which in my mind are essentially colonial, ex-colonial and ex-settler colonial states, whether we should call them ex-settler colonial states is a different issue, that they can make up the rules of the world. Other countries don't have any voice in this. This is the new world order in which the rule book will be decided by these handful of countries. And that's why the European Union step in this direction is actually very similar to what the US has been propagating. So what we find is an alignment of the so-called rules of the game that they are now propounding, which will be decided by only them. Absolutely. And Praveen finally just wanted to take maybe a look at the larger politics of the region itself. We cannot see this incident and especially the Western response in isolation from the protests that took place in Belarus last year, the response of the West at that point, there was an entire political media NGO centered response to basically stage a color revolution there. It was pretty obvious at that point. So how do we see, not only just this incident, but the current geopolitical situation in that region, itself where Belarus and Russia have a particular dynamic. And of course, the West is now very keen on making sure that Alexander Lukashenko is over. If you talk about the larger picture, this is very clear that you have as close ties between Russia and China developing. And Russia has tried to reach out to European Union to the United States. It's been rebuffed consistently and it has been asked to take a subordinate position, which it is not willing to take, justifying. So given that Russia and China have come much closer together. So what is increasingly being is visible is the Eastern Europe, the Baltics, the Eastern European countries, these are in play, which way they will go. Most of them have already aligned with NATO. And therefore the few that have not are under pressure of different kinds. And obviously Belarus is one of the key ones. This play is also extending to Central Asia. So you're going to see this whole region come into play. And mainly because once China's Belt Road Initiative takes steam and it is already gathering steam, it has linked itself to Germany. There is regular freight which goes between China through Russia into Eastern Europe and then further on to Germany. All of this is creating a condition where Europe could in fact play a role by which it acts as a kind of bridge between these countries, Russia and China and the United States. So the play is really to get them commit against Russia and against China. And all of these therefore can be seen as signals that which way the NATO partners and particularly the Western European countries will lean towards. And as of now with Biden coming into power, the Trumps in your face, America first position being given up, the allies being handled with a little more softness, though in terms of the actual policies, not much has changed. But the fact is the optics has changed. Means that Western Europe is now willing to look towards, increasingly towards the United States and hoping thereby to maintain its hegemony over the world as a partner of United States. The realignment which was possible that Western Europe plays a more neutral role, so to say between United States, China and Russia. This seems to be now not on the cards and we see a weakening there for Western Europe's independence positions. Now, how much of this is a precursor to that? Is it that this mixed signals because Nord Stream 2 is still on the gas pipeline, which is between Russia and Germany, that has not been abandoned as the United States was trying. So how much independent position Western Europe will take for its own economic interest and political interest remains to be seen. But the signals on this with the Belarusian incident, for instance, earlier with what we saw in Russia itself with Navalny, all of this are not good portents. And therefore, I think that Western Europe still is veering increasingly towards United States or remaining in that camp. And that realignment of a possibility of its playing a more independent role is not really bearing out. So I think that is the takeaway that I would have from this Belarusian incident. Not so much as what happens to Belarus, but what happens to Western Europe itself. Absolutely. Thank you so much, Praveer, for talking to us. That's all we have time for today. Keep watching Newsweek.